Can a Doberman become a Chihuahua because it runs a little too fast? Those are the types of conclusions the mathematicians reach when they extrapolate their abstract equations to the real world.

____________________

Length is a distance?

In the last 10,000 years, the mathematicians have failed to learn that length and distance are not synonyms. A mathematician defines length as 'the distance between the end points of a line segment' and distance as 'the length of the line segment joining two points.' It should not surprise us, then, that Special Relativity arrives at amusing conclusion such as that the concept 'length' can contract. (And all this time I thought it was my shirt that contracted!)

But semantics aside, length is what ONE object has, distance is what we find between TWO objects. A loaf of bread has length. Distance refers to the separation between the surfaces of two of them. Length is to objects what distance is to space. They are conceptually irreconcilable.

The difference between length and distance

It turns out that relativists are invoking neither length nor distance in their contraction theory. They are talking about distance-traveled. A mathematician has no use for static qualitative concepts such as length or distance. Mathematics ONLY deals with dynamic concepts.

Whenever a mathematician says distance, he is thinking about a value, a magnitude, a number (e.g., 5 feet, 10 kilometers). In order to take a measurement, he has to engage in a little bit of surrealism. The mathematician freezes the entire Universe, unwinds his tape from A to B, takes a measurement, and then allows the Universe to continue its course. The 'distance' of Mathematics is conceptually the distance-traveled by the leading edge of his tape from A to B. Distance-traveled involves a single object (in this case, the leading edge of the tape). In contrast, the qualitative distance of Physics refers to the separation between two distinct objects. Distance traveled is a dynamic concept. Distance and length are static concepts. Any time a you can express distance or length with numbers and units, you are not talking about static length or distance, but about measuring.

The mathematicians confuse distance (static separation) with distance-traveled (dynamic distance) by the leading edge of the tape.

A mathematician may argue that this is a petty semantic argument. Mathematics has its own set of definitions and these do not always coincide with the meanings of ordinary speech.

Actually, it's the other way around. The ones relying on ordinary speech are the mathematicians who merely copy definitions from the ordinary dictionary without bothering to analyze whether these definitions may be extrapolated into science. The problem is that the mathematician of relativity tries to convince you that the length of a ruler or the separation between two trees contracted simply because a particle zips by at the speed of light. The presentation is about Math, but the conclusions are extrapolated into Physics. Hence, it is pertinent to establish whether the mathematicians are talking about the length (extent of an object) and distance (separation) of Physics or about the distance-traveled (moving the edge of a tape, counting tiles) of Math. Perhaps the mathematicians can get away with arguing that dynamic distance traveled contracted, certainly not the static distance or length of Physics. A movie may be shorter if we snip a strip of film from it. The distance between the two rocks in a photograph had better not change!

Yet, even the shortening of distance-traveled is surrealistic. What sense can it make to say that we can eliminate frames from the Universal Movie? Did the Moon skip a few locations between here and there? Can motion be that choppy? How nuanced can it be? Can we find a location of the Moon between any two of its locations?

In Einstein amusing 'length contraction' theory, something's gotta give. If it isn't (static) length or distance, it's got to be (dynamic) distance-traveled. But when we rule out distance-traveled, the entire explanation becomes nonsense. Special Relativity's 'length contraction' theory actually shows that Mathematics is not the language of Physics. More to the point, such outrageous claims as length contraction have no place whatsoever in Science. Rather, length contraction suggests that many gullible individuals have set their ability to reason aside and rely on authority and a show of hands to form their opinions.

More by this Author

General Relativity sweeps the troublesome Mach's Principle under the rug and has no explanation for the complex units of the gravitational constant G.
On the other hand, the rope hypothesis justifies Mach's Principle...